Witch Doctor - Wiz in Rhyme-3 (42 page)

"Oh, aye!" He nodded his head, most emphatically. "For one who has survived the Ordeal? Oh, most surely."

You bet he thought it was a good idea. Get me out of his hair, for only a longboat and a week's worth of rations? Cheap at the price. For all he knew, I might have been sore enough to turn against him. Which wasn't that bad an idea, now that I thought of it-but I didn't have time; I had bigger fish to spear.

"And speaking of water I glanced suggestively at the water skin. The duke snapped his fingers, and the water carrier hurried to the front with the skin. He started to hand it to me, then thought better of it and shoved it at his boss. Let him take the risks.

"All praise to he who has survived the ordeal," the duke said, presenting the skin as if it were a trophy.

By extreme self-control, I managed not to snatch it; I only took it from his hands slowly, popped the cork, and shot a jet from it into my mouth, reflecting on the irony of cool wetness tasting so good, so soon after I had almost hoped I would never have to see another drop of it. I was going to have to be careful what I wished for. A couple of men-at-arms were very willing to push the boat into the waves for me, saving my legs from wetness at the cost of their own dousing. I could have done it myself easily enough, but if they wanted to honor me, I was willing to let them. I was beginning to realize the value of status and prestige in a world like this one. Besides, it helped them feel as if they were doing something to get rid of me. I let go of an oar long enough to wave bye-bye, then managed to catch it again before it had quite slipped away into the next wave. It was going to take me a while to get used to having just a couple of pegs for an oarlock.

Nonetheless, I did manage to get the boat through the breakers and

out beyond the bar-I could almost hear the soldiers snickering at my lack of seamanship, all the way out here. After all, on a little island like this, every able-bodied man must have started out as a fisherman or a sailor, even if he later became a soldier. They'd make fantastic marines.

Out into the swells, I shipped the oars and hoisted canvas. I'd learned to sail in the summers, out of sheer boredom-when you grow up near the Great Lakes, you have all sorts of opportunities for water sports. So I managed to get the sail up and catch a breeze without capsizing. My wake began to foam, and I was off.

Very quickly the wind picked up. I frowned, shivering and wishing I'd thought to ask the duke for a cloak, then glanced up at the sun. There wasn't much of it there.

I glared up at the clouds, willing them away-but I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach. The day had dawned clear and sunny-very sunny. If it was clouding up so soon, it could just be a storm front moving in-or it could be Suettay, out to have another try at drowning me. If I had another storm blow up, there wouldn't be any Frisson around to hand me magic verses. I'd have to try to lull it by myselfand I hated working magic on my own. It felt like surrender, somehow. Besides, I wasn't all that sure I could succeed.

None of that! I reminded myself sternly. Defeatist attitudes wouldn't help. Besides, I didn't really need to make the storm go away-just manage to get safely to shore.

Safely?

A nasty suspicion budded in my head and blossomed into the fullgrown conviction that the storm dying down just where it did hadn't been completely my doing. Suettay could have seen that I was going to win that round and kept wrestling just long enough to drive us onto the island, hoping that its xenophobic duke would do her dirty work for her, conveniently killing us off before we could do her any more damage. Maybe I hadn't won such a great victory, after all. Maybe it had really been a very deliberate conjuration by a very nasty sorceress.

Of course, she might have been doing me a favor-as a ghost, I could no doubt have had a much better time with Angelique than I

could as a

I clamped down on that thought, hard. That way lay suicide, and losing all hope of getting Angelique completely free Of Suettay's machinations.

Careful, there, boy, I warned myself. You're coming perilously close to admitting that magic works in the here-and-now. No. Absolutely impossible. A philosophical absurdity. Which, of course, was the point-magic was completely illogical.

Completely?

I reined in my thoughts, exasperated. When would I ever learn to stop making sweeping generalizations? They always had exceptions. Okay-so maybe this universe was one of the exceptions?

I backed up against that one like a Missouri mule against an overloaded wagon. Somehow, I was constitutionally unable to accept the notion that magic might work, outside of a massively detailed hallucination. Possibly because if I allowed that it did, I would find it very hard to come up with a reason to avoid committing myself to one side or the other.

Or to Angelique?

Well, now, that was the advantage to being in love with a ghost. The vow, after all, reads, "Till death do us part," and death already had parted us-before we even got together.

Somehow, that sounded pretty thin, but I held onto it. All right. Try something else then. And hurry, stupid-those clouds have grown awfully thick and awfully low, and that breeze has a definite taste of rain to it.

Okay. I decided to suppose, just suppose, magic really did work in this world. How would I work my way out of this storm?

All right, so I was cheating. I put that issue aside and decided to deal with it when I had time.

Actually, I wasn't all that sure I wanted to get rid of the storm. Drifting without any wind at all wasn't exactly my idea of a picnic, either. If I could throttle it down, maybe, or direct it ... Or both. After all, the nymph Thyme was supposedly nearby, on one of these Mediterranean islands. I decided to work from that.

o blow, ye winds, heigh-ho!

To Thyme I wish to go!

I've stayed no more on the ordeal's shore, So let the music play!

I'm off with the morning's gain, To cross the raging main!

I'm off to see Thyme With a pack of rhyme, So many miles away!" The wind veered. I knew, because my sail swung about almost ninety degrees. it creaked as the strength of the wind bellied it out to

its limit, and the wind sang in the stays-sure enough, the music played! I noticed that, just as a burst of spray drenched my back and shoulders. I yelped-it was cold! But that didn't matter, because just then a giant kettledrum boomed overhead and rolled all about me, and its owner pulled the plug. Rain sluiced down, not bothering with individual drops, and I was soaked to the skin. Shivering, too, and my canvas sail groaned. I hitched around, alarmed, to lower itand my feet sloshed through a few inches of water. I stared down, feeling the first faint fingers of fear take hold as I realized I might ship enough water to sink.

All of a sudden, I was in favor of half measures. A little thunderstorm can be a blast, when you can revel in the wildness of the wind and the power of the storm-but when it's all directed right at you, it can be a little unnerving. Scaled down, mind you, I would probably have loved it-if I'd had a soulwester.

What harm could it do? I tried.

"So blow, ye winds, heigh-how, But not so hard as now!

I've need of speed, but less, indeed, So slacken your gale-force blasts!

My sail can't stand the strain!

Slow down your wind and rain!

I can wait for the tide, And Thyme can bide.

Be a good stiff breeze that lasts!"

The thunder cracked and growled, and I could have sworn it cursed. But it faded even as it snarled, and the wind slackened. My sail groaned with relief, and the rain toned down to a heavy soaker with headstrong winds. I shivered and sneezed. Landing near Thyme's hideout wouldn't do me much good if I was dead of pneumonia when I got there, or even just delirious with fever. I thought of trying for that sou'wester, then rebuked myself for being greedy, not to say soft. What was a little rain, anyway? After all, yesterday I would have given anything for this. I gritted my teeth and held on. Over the waves that gale blew me. I lashed the line around a thwart and held on to the tiller for dear life. It wasn't too bad for the first hour, but then I began to get tired. It didn't help that I couldn't see too far in front of me, either-but after the second hour, my eyelids were drooping so much that it didn't matter terribly, either. How

far could it be to Thyme's island, anyway? I thought these Mediterranean mountaintops came in archipelagoes.

Finally, the sky lightened. The last thunderclap sounded far behind me, and the rain lightened to a drizzle. Not that I stopped shivering, though. Fortunately, the wind was still strong enough to keep my boat going into the waves, instead of veering crosswise; unfortunately, it was also hard enough to keep my teeth from chattering.

Then I realized there was a dark blob on the skyline ahead of me. My spirits lifted amazingly. I tightened my weary grip on the tiller and grinned into the salt spray that doused me in the face. Relief was

in sight.

Relief swelled up mighty fast, too, the blob growing into something that filled most of the horizon. Almost too late, I realized that the wind behind the boat was going to keep driving me until I was right up on the shore-which would be just fine if there weren't any rocks in the way, but I heard a suspicious booming, dead ahead. I managed to pry my fingers loose, pulled my right hand off the tiller, and just barely got the knot loose in time. Then I hung on as the rope sizzled through my fingers so that the sail would collapse, not blow away. I yelped as the rough hemp burned me, then reflected that it was the first heat I'd had in hours. First too much heat and dryness, then too much heat and coldness-I longed for a happy medium. The boat slowed down just in time for me to notice rocks rising up to left and right, but I could see a narrow gap between them. I heaved and pushed at the tiller, just barely managing to slip the boat through without shoaling. Then I realized that there was a pole in the bottom of the boat. I caught it up and fended off the rocks on either side until, amazingly, they were gone.

I turned and looked ahead to see the beach heaving toward me. I figured it was my boat that was doing the heaving, not the shore, and held on to try to enjoy the ride. Okay, after those rocks took out the worst of it, the surf wasn't anything you'd find on Malibu, but it was still enough to drive my longboat ashore.

It jammed into sand, and I barely had enough presence of mind left to jump out, wade to the bow, and haul it onto the beach before the backwash could pull it out to sea again. Then another wave came along and pushed, and I gained another yard or two, enough to keep the boat secure from the next tug of receding water. I waited for the next wave. It came, I closed my eyes and threw my weight back against the boat-and it came. Easily.

Too easily.

I had to run backward to keep from being bowled over. I opened my eyes to see what had happened and saw a huge pair of hands clamped onto the far side of the boat, pulling. I kept pulling, too, as I followed the hands up arms like hawsers, to a huge and hairy chest with eyes like saucers at the top, looking down at me while a huge mouth curved open into a grin set with shark teeth.

I stared up as my heart dropped down, trying to hide in my boot tops.

Then I recognized him-I hoped. "Gruesome!" The grin widened even further, and his top half nodded eagerly.

"Yuh! Yoh! Goosum!" And the huge arms crunched me up against his stony hide while his basso voice chirped, "Goosum so happy see Saw!

" It was more of a croak than a chirp, actually, and he stank abominably. I made a mental note to teach him about bathing and squirmed around enough to gasp, "I'm glad to see you, too, Gruesome." And I was, surprisingly-after that stint in the desert and all that ocean, anything familiar looked good. Besides, he had saved my life once or twice, or had at least helped out.

But that clinch was inching me uncomfortably close to those shark teeth. "Yeah, glad to see you. Uh-how about putting me down, Gruesome? " He started to, but hesitated with both huge mitts wrapped around my ribs, holding me up, and I could have sworn I saw a hungry glint in his eye. I was sure about the drops of drool glinting on his canines.

They made him swallow, and it sure sounded as if he smacked his lips.

"Down, Gruesome!"

"Yuh, yuh! Down! " He finally lowered me till my feet touched sand, and loosened his hold. I twisted the rest of the way out of his grip with a sigh of relief, telling myself that I really hadn't had anything to worry about-but myself wasn't listening too well. "You won't believe this, but I'm really glad to see you. What're you doing here, though? I thought you were still on the mainland!"

"Mainland?" He scowled.

I decided that was better than the grin-it showed fewer teeth.

"You know-Allustria? The place where I met you? Where we fought Sue ... uh, the wicked queen?"

"Queen! Uh-h-h-h!" He shrank away. "Queen found us! Shellmen!

Sharp!"

Us? Had Gruesome somehow found the others? If so, I gathered that they had made it back to the mainland, but Suettay had ambushed them with a dozen or so knights-and panic stirred in my depths, assuming I had any. "Couldn't Frisson make them disappear?"

"Yuh, yuh!" He nodded. "Got two! But shell men had spell man!"

"The war party had a sorcerer?"

"Yuh, yuh! Bad, bad! Stopped Fish-un's spells! Shell men hit himboom!" He slammed one huge fist into the other for emphasis. I braced myself against the shock wave, then said, "You mean a couple of the knights knocked him out?"

"Yuh, Yuh! Sleep! More shell men hit Gibbet! And me!"

"I was wondering if you'd done any fighting." Frankly, I had difficulty imagining that he hadn't. I hoped he'd remembered that just because something's in a shell doesn't mean it's fair game for eating.

"How many of them did you knock out?"

"Two! Tree! Five!" Gruesome held up one combination of fingers after another, and his brow furrowed at the immense task of counting. I decided to spare him the trouble. "You knocked out a lot of them, anyway. How come that didn't stop them?"